Twitter really can make a difference by opening a dialog between people who otherwise would never talk. There are a few simple keys to making tweets more impactful. Mark Schaefer in his post “The four keys to tweet success” clearly explains some best practices for successful tweeting.

Keys to Tweeting

(1) Quality tweets are more impactful than the quantity of tweets. Basically, it is better to tweet relevant valuable information rather than tweeting anything and everything. Too many tweets that are irrelevant become an annoyance and none of us wants that.

(2) Treat your tweets like a headline on a news paper or magazine article. If they are impactful people are more likely to read all 140 characters and if there is a link are more likely to go to the link. This also applies to re-tweets. By placing the re-tweet information at the end of the tweet will keep your reader’s attention better.

(3) Quality tweets have a longer life.

(4) Tweet timing is important. Tweeting between 30-60 minutes or between 2 and 3 hours is most effective for engaging your readers. Too often becomes noisy and too few gets lost in the sea of tweets.

I am going to suggest that some of our Council members begin to tweet throughout the day. It would be great if we can build a Tribal online community to give them an audience and us a voice directly to Council.